User:Masel/Builds/Specter

Scepter + Dagger Condition  Specter

Build Rating (Subjective)

Criterion	Rating
Burst Damage	5/5
Sustained Damage	5/5
Utility Options	4/5
Survivability	4/5
Difficulty	2/5

Condition Specter has a simple-to-learn rotation and is lots of fun to play in open world and instanced content. It can provide itself with good amounts of all essential offensive boons:  Quickness,  Alacrity,  Might and  Fury. It excels when you can precast   Prepare Thousand Needles and has great burst damage in instanced content for a condition build due to   Spider Venom and   Skale Venom. It always provides a good uptime on  Fury,  Vigor,  Swiftness and 10 Stacks of  Might around it and can further be altered to provide  Alacrity with smaller tweaks.

Link to the DPS Build in the Build Editor:

Build

Playstyle & Skills

Skill Type	Skills
Steal & Good Stolen Skills
Shroud Skills
Scepter + Pistol
Utility

Thieves are – together with Revenants – the only profession in the game with a resource bar that determines how often you can use skills. On this profession, skills have different Initiative costs, but no internal cooldown. You regenerate 1 Initiative per second, but there are other ways to increase the inflow. Since skills have no internal cooldown, this often means that the skill that does the most damage per cast and initiative spent is repeated (like   Twilight Combo on this build), making most rotations on Thief relatively simple to understand.

Rotation Concept

The rotation for this build is very simple and consists of two main sections, one inside and one outside of   Shadow Shroud.

Step 1: Opener and Outside of   Shadow Shroud

Whenever possible, precast   Prepare Thousand Needles. The cooldown from Preparations ticks down after their first cast, allowing you to cast another instance right away if you can precast it 30 seconds before combat starts. Against mobile bosses, this skill can become hard to use due to the 3 second delay. In those cases, use   Devourer Venom instead. Use both   Spider Venom and   Skale Venom after combat starts, as they get stripped on engage. Spend all your initiative on   Twilight Combo, as it is the strongest damage skill on your weapons. While doing that, use the following skills on cooldown:

1.   Thousand Needles
2.   Spider Venom
3.   Skale Venom
4.   Siphon (should be used on cooldown inside and outside of Shroud).

Step 2:   Shadow Shroud

Inside   Shadow Shroud, the concept is to stay inside for a particular number of casts of   Grasping Shadows while using   Eternal Night on cooldown. In general, you want to stay inside Shroud for two casts of   Grasping Shadows, not more. The reason is that the damage bonus from  Lead Attacks stays consistently high with shorter Shroud loops. BUT: since you spend all your Initiative prior to entering the first loop inside Shroud, you will have enough stacks of  Lead Attacks to stay inside for three casts of   Grasping Shadows. If you want to provide  Alacrity, you can freely extend the Shroud loops to provide additional  Alacrity.

Utility Skills

Utility Skills

Skill Choice	Notes
Well of Gloom	Cheap and strong heal that also heals allies and allows you to Shadowstep. For a more pasive inflow of healing, you can use   Signet of Malice.
Prepare Thousand Needles	This skill is strong damage via  Immobile,  Bleeding and  Poisoned on the secondary cast   Thousand Needles. You can precast this up to 5 minutes prior to combat starting, allowing you to reset the cooldown (the cooldown ticks down after the first cast). Unfortunately, this also means that losing the precast will decrease the burst damage of this build noticeably on some encounters. On highly mobile encounters, use   Devourer Venom instead.
Spider Venom	Like the next two skills, this is a Venom skill that applies  Poisoned for each stack of its effect. The venom effects are applied to yourself and up to 4 nearby allies. The conditions applied by allies count for your damage and use your stats! This leads to a massive difference in damage dealt per cast between solo and group gameplay. You can use any kind of friendly NPC to apply more stacks in solo gameplay, including summons like the thieves from   Thieves Guild.
Skale Venom	This applies four stacks of  Torment and  Vulnerability per ally it is applied to, leading to massive burst damage when used in groups, especially when combined with   Spider Venom.
Basilisk Venom	Applies a Stun on cast. Since it is a Venom skill, this gets shared with 4 nearby allies too, making it one of the strongest CC skills in the game.

CC Skills for Breakbar Damage:

•   Basilisk Venom should be taken and prioritized whenever CC is needed.
•   Mind Shock (also free  Stability for you).
• Immobilized via  Panic Strike and   Thousand Needles

Gear

For gear, you can freely mix pieces of Viper's and Ritualist's. Each piece of Viper's gives you a slightly higher damage output than Ritualist's (~6-7% damage difference for a full set), but comes at the cost of more difficult  Alacrity coverage and less bulky   Shadow Shrouds - the size of   Shadow Shrouds is equal to 69% of your  Vitality. If you can't afford two sets, my recommendation is to use Ritualist's as the base variant and use an Amulet, Head, Chest Item and Weapons with Viper's on them. That will get you right between the two builds in terms of stats and provide a good allrounder setup of all kinds of PvE.

Important Stats (descending in Importance):

1. ~93%  Torment Duration
2. 100%  Poisoned Duration
3. Maximize Condition Damage

Since the vast majority of damage comes from  Torment and  Poisoned, it is important to reach 100% condition duration on them.

Gear

Armor	Prefix	Rune
Head	Viper's or Ritualist's	Superior Rune of the Trapper
Shoulders	Viper's or Ritualist's	Superior Rune of the Trapper
Chest	Viper's or Ritualist's	Superior Rune of the Trapper
Gloves	Viper's or Ritualist's	Superior Rune of the Trapper
Legs	Viper's or Ritualist's	Superior Rune of the Trapper
Boots	Viper's or Ritualist's	Superior Rune of the Trapper
Trinket	Prefix
Amulet	Viper's or Ritualist's
Ring 1	Viper's or Ritualist's
Ring 2	Viper's or Ritualist's
Accessory 1	Viper's or Ritualist's
Accessory 2	Viper's or Ritualist's
Backpack	Viper's or Ritualist's
Weapon	Prefix	Sigil
Scepter (Main Hand)	Viper's or Ritualist's	Superior Sigil of Torment
Dagger (Off Hand)	Viper's or Ritualist's	Superior Sigil of Doom
Purpose	Item Type	Source
Damage	Ascended Food	Cilantro and Cured Meat Flatbread
Damage	Non-Ascended Food (Ideal here)	Meaty Asparagus Skewer
Survivability	Ascended Food	Peppered Cured Meat Flatbread
Survivability	Non-Ascended Food	Oysters Gnashblade
Damage	Utility	Toxic Focusing Crystal
Survivability	Utility	Potion Of Karka Toughness
Damage	Relic	Relic of the Fractal

• For a budget variant, simply replace all armor pieces of Viper's with rare/exotic Ritualist's. For the backpack, you can use a Crafter's backpack of the highest tier and select either Celestial or Rabid.
• Ascended gear is always ideal, but exotic gear is fine for everything aside from higher-tier fractals.

Traits

Deadly Arts
Trickery
Specter

Deadly Arts

• The default specializations for damage are  Deadly Arts,  Trickery and of course  Daredevil.
• Deadly Arts massively increases the damage you deal via  Poisoned. It grants 180 condition damage and 33% longer duration and damage on  Poisoned.
• Through  Panic Strike, you apply  Poisoned every time you apply  Immobile. The cooldown pertains to the application of  Immobile against foe below 50% health.
• You deal 2% more strike damage for each unique Condition on enemies, but on a condition build, this only has a small impact. The same applies to  Lotus Poison.

Trickery

• The second specialization for group content is Trickery.
• It enhances   Steal by reducing its cooldown and adding  Bleeding and several Boons to it.
• It gives higher damage for each point of Initiative you spend via  Lead Attacks. That is why you want to keep spending Initiative.
•  Thrill of the Crime and  Bountiful Theft provide Boons in an area on using  Siphon. You can cover a full uptime on them as long as you have a few pieces of Ritualist's on you.

Specter

• In Specter, the most important trait distinction is between  Strength of Shadows and  Shadestep. The former is used for maximum personal damage output, the latter for covering  Alacrity

DPS Rotation Showcase

• Careful:This build scales with the number of conditions on the enemy. For guidance on setting up the training area, see my guide for it
• You can find my most recent rotation showcase here.

Open World Build

[ You can find my most recent open world build showcase here.]

Link to the Open World Build on the Editor

Increasing Survivability

• For OW, it can make sense to make a build more forgiving, so that you can sustain on your own.
• On Specter, I recommend to use at least Ritualist's armor for open world (there is very cheap Rare Armor), as the additional  Vitality and  Concentration come in handy.
• The more pieces of Ritualist's or Celestial you have, the easier maintaining the Boons listed below becomes. Celestial is the more survivable option, but more expensive if you buy it off the Trading Post.
• When using Wells, I also usually switch to  Traversing Dusk to improve healing, Shadow Force inflow and covering  Resistance.
• Use the survivability food and utility item listed above for -10% damage taken and 150 Toughness!

Boon Coverage

• This build shares all boons listed below aside from  Quickness in an area around it, making it a great choice for group gameplay in open world.
• To cover self- Quickness, make use of Relic of the Chronomancer and swap out your utility skills for the following:

1.   Well of Sorrow - Strong for damage, increases your general cleave potential for mob clearing.
2.   Well of Bounty - covers a bunch of self-Boons, including a good chunk of  Might and  Stability
3.   Haste - easy coverage of  Quickness and a Stun break.
4.   Shadowfall - For additional  Quickness uptime, can be swapped out for any other elite of your choice.

•  Might and  Fury are covered by  Thrill of the Crime,  Bountiful Theft,   Well of Bounty and   Haste.
• Additionally, swap out  Strength of Shadows for  Shadestep and  Quick Pockets for  Sleight of Hand. This will allow you to cover  Alacrity in an area and makes all other beneficial effects of your Shroud skills apply in an area too.  Sleight of Hand reduces the cooldown of   Siphon, improving inflow of Shadow Force and Boon coverage.
• Condition Specter has no useful source of  Protection on itself. Therefore, using   Jade Tech Offensive Overcharge and   Jade Tech Defensive Overcharge will massively increase your surviviability in solo gameplay.
• These give for 150 additional Toughness, Vitality, Condition Damage and Power as well as all boons aside from  Stability,  Resistance and  Resolution on entering combat. These effects can be pre-stacked by using an Enchanted Snow Diamond Tonic repeatedly when out of combat. They will fully cover  Protection in general roaming, where you enter and exit combat frequently!

Dealing with Incoming Conditions and Control effects

• For condition cleanses, make use of   Grasping Shadows frequently.
• If you need additional cleanses, replace any utility skill with   Well of Silence or slap on another Dagger with a Superior Sigil of Purity (e.g. Claws of the Desert for …).
•   Haste is a Stun break with a short cooldown.
•   Mind Shock and   Well of Bounty apply  Stability in an area around you.